Philippines' Aboitiz to boost generation by 200MW

Aboitiz Power will increase its electricity generation portfolio with a greenfield 200-megawatt power facility in the Visayas.

This was relayed by d.

The new facility will probably be coal-fired for lack of options.

“We’re looking at other technologies, but to be honest at this point in time, coal is the cheapest,” he stressed.

This is meant to beef up baseload capacity beyond 2015 when demand is again expected to outstrip supply.

The commercial operation date, the design as well as the siting of the proposed Visayas facility are among the items being firmed up yet by the Aboitiz firm.

The planned Visayas power project will be an addition to the growing investments of the Aboitiz group in Luzon and Mindanao grids. The conglomerate previously lined up multi-year capital expenditures of P170 billion to bring all of its power projects to completion.

The AP chief executive has emphasized that one technology option they are seriously looking at is LNG, albeit he asserted that the main concern they’re trying to unravel is how to possibly bring down the cost for this market similar to what has been happening in the United States and Canada.

“We are looking at it, and we’re trying to understand it because we think that LNG is the fuel of the future. And we think that prices can become cheaper, and that is being made possible now with the shale gas in the US, Canada and other parts of the world,” he stressed.

Aboitiz opined that the country needs to balance its energy mix, noting that fossil fuel-fired facilities as well as renewables would be the sector’s inescapable future.

For more.